


wherever i am, some part of you is a part of me too

by majesdane



Series: que estaba tan enamorada de ella como el primer día [7]
Category: Seis Hermanas (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - San Junipero, Canonical Character Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-24 09:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9715415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdane/pseuds/majesdane
Summary: Somewhere, Celia is dreaming of her too.| this is the beginning. but it's also the end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _"Celia es mi alma gemela. Por eso, me voy feliz. Porque la mayoría de la gente solo puede soñar con tener lo que yo he tenido."_

__i think here i will leave you. it has come to seem / there is no perfect ending.  
indeed, there are infinite endings. / or perhaps, once one begins, / there are only endings.  
\-- louise glück, _faithful and virtuous night_  
  
today you became a yesterday, when once you were a tomorrow.  
\-- _iwrotethisforyou_

 

 

( _you must be maria,_ aurora had said.)

( _celia,_ celia corrected her.)

(and there began a most glorious affair.)

 

;;

 

She doesn't know where she is; she's wandered into somewhere new. She can smell the ocean in the distance. Mountains border the city on one side, dark with evergreens. It looks a little like Argentina, but not quite. The streets are bustling with activity; streetcars rumble by, children dart through the crowds, chasing each other along the sidewalk. Overhead, the skies are bright and clear. Somehow, Aurora knows this is where she's meant to be. But she doesn't know where to go.

A hand on her shoulder. Someone saying her name. It's a voice Aurora hasn't heard in years. 

_You're here,_ Adela says. She's wearing a bright red dress, with fancy cream colored trim. Beside her is Germán, smartly dressed in a deep navy suit. _Is Celia with you?_ Adela asks. Aurora shakes her head. Adela's expression changes, realization slowly dawning on her. She pulls Aurora into a tight hug. _Está bien,_ she says, into Aurora's shoulder. _I'll take care of you. We'll wait for her together._

 

;;

 

Sometimes, when it's quiet, Celia finds herself thinking about Aurora. The image of her has never dulled in Celia's mind. Not a single moment. She can see her now, sitting by the window in their tiny apartment in Argentina, backed by the setting sun. Awash in deep hues of red and gold. Or Aurora in bed, waking, still half in a dream, reaching for Celia with a slight smile. Her fingers curling into the fabric of Celia's nightgown, pulling her close. Lazy, open-mouthed kisses. Aurora's perfume, sweet as a garden in the blush of spring.

(te quiero. y no puedo vivir sin ti.)

Minutes and hours and months and years. Day after day after miserable day. A wound that never heals. Sometimes it lessens. Other times, it wakes her up, the pain of missing Aurora so bad. It feels like there's a fist around her heart, squeezing too tight. She can hardly breathe. At times like this, she writes; a thousand words for every moment they shared together. She's running out of words to describe the colors of Aurora's eyes. How Aurora looked under the stars or in the pale moonlight. The curve of her body in the bright light of morning. The way she laughed. The feeling of her smile against Celia's smile. _¿Quieres casarte conmigo?_ Aurora's fingers brushing against hers in the Ambigú. Sitting on a park bench, almost close enough to touch. Aurora, leaning in, her mouth against Celia's ear, whispering, _Meine Liebe_. 

Aurora, kissing her in the kitchen in their little house in Arganzuela. Celia, her hand on Aurora's cheek, wiping away a tear. Aurora, resting her chin on the back of her hand, gazing at Celia adoringly. Celia's hands in her hair, Aurora's mouth on her skin. Goodbye kisses and desperate kisses and everything in between.

Moments upon moments upon moments. Gone in the blink of an eye. If only, Celia thinks, she had held on a little tighter. If only she had known.

 

;;

 

It's called San Junipero, Aurora learns. Juniper; everlasting. Petra was the first. And then came Germán. And Carolina followed, only a little while later. One by one, they found each other, drawn together by an invisible string that tethered them all together. There's a house downtown, not unlike Casa Silva in the world they came from. _We all live here,_ Adela tells her. The house always seems to have enough bedrooms, no matter how many people come.

Things are different here. Peaceful. No animosity or jealousy. No anger. Petra greets Aurora as if they're old friends, smiling and pulling Aurora in for a long embrace. _It's good to see you,_ she says, though her voice catches a little. She reaches for Aurora's hand, squeezing tight. 

Adela says, _There's someone you should meet._

Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, there's a little boy with dark hair asleep in bed. He's very young, curled up small under the blankets and cuddling a little stuffed bear. There's a familiarity about him that Aurora can't quite place. Something tugs at her heart. Aurora looks over at Adela, who's leaning on the door frame. 

_Petra found him two years ago._ Adela nods towards the bed. _He was just a baby then, all wrapped up in blankets. You can see he's grown quite a lot since then._

Aurora crosses the room, sitting down carefully on the side of the bed. She strokes the little boy's hair. He stirs a little in his sleep, making a tiny, contented sound. _Does he have a name?_

Innately, she know it, even as she asks. She looks at Adela, who smiles.

 _Lucas,_ Adela says.

 

;;

 

(and here is aurora and celia in bed, years ago, celia's head pressed against the swell of aurora's belly, laughing when she feels the baby kick. _what do you want to call him?_ celia is shifting up, smiling. _not clemente, right?_ aurora shakes her head, pulls celia in for a kiss. _of course not._ )

( _lucas,_ celia says, suddenly, in the kitchen a few days later. aurora looks at her, confused. _that's what you should name your son_ \-- 

\-- _our son,_ aurora corrects --

_lucas is what my parents would have named their son, if they'd had one. it's a good name, isn't it?_

better, too, because it's a part of celia, aurora says. because now it really _is_ their son.

celia kisses aurora so hard that it leaves them both breathless.)

 

;;

 

The years, inevitably, dull the pain. Not enough to forget, but just enough to get by. And still, forever, Aurora is the phantom presence in her life. The unspoken thing that weighs, like an anchor, over everything. Aurora is there in the pauses between conversations. In the seconds between breaths. At times, Celia jerks awake, gasping, eyes stinging with tears. 

A hand on Celia's back. A kiss pressed to her shoulder through her nightgown.

(it could be aurora.)

(but it's not.)

(it never will be again.)

_¿Estás bien?_

What can Celia do but nod, hands trembling.

(that's when i knew that i would love you forever.)

There is nothing left to say.

 

;;

 

There's a woman here who looks just like Adela, albeit a little older. She kisses Aurora's cheeks. When she smiles, it's Celia's smile. _I'm so happy Celia found you,_ the woman says, and Aurora's heart feels close to bursting. 

Adela and Petra ask Aurora about Celia. About all of the things that they missed. Aurora tells them about their year in Argentina. Their little apartment, right on the coast, on the top floor. How they slept with the windows open in the summer and the sheets smelled like the ocean. How the music from the cafes would drift up from the streets and they'd push the furniture aside and slow dance in the low evening light.

And, oh, how happy they'd been. The happiest time of Aurora's life. She could have never even dreamed of it. 

It's the little things that Aurora remembers most clearly. She thinks about Celia in the evenings, when it's quiet and still. She closes her eyes, remembering.

(celia, in the kitchen, face knitted in concentration, flour on her nose.)

(or naked and flushed, the outline of her against the pale moonlight, pulling aurora in for a desperate kiss.)

(or the way celia always held her hand in the evenings when they ate dinner.)

(the way they'd kissed goodbye in the mornings.)

San Junipero is lovely. But it's nothing compared to those moments. She dreams -- or at least, she thinks she dreams -- of Celia. She likes to imagine that somewhere, Celia is dreaming of her too. That maybe, for one small, brief moment, they're together again. 

 

;;

 

Lucas ages, but she does not. There is a sort of magic to San Junipero, one that no one quite seems to understand. When Cristóbal arrives, he looks exactly the same as he did when Aurora last saw him. Handsome and full of life. Aurora finds him in the street, gazing at the mountains. _Don't worry,_ she tells him, just as Adela once said to her. _We'll wait together._

At night, she listens to Lucas' soft breathing in the bed next to hers; as he grows older, he likes to fall asleep listening to Aurora's stories about Celia. Aurora brushes the hair out of his eyes and tells him all the stories she knows. _Your other mother was smart,_ she tells him. _So smart. She knew four languages. She wrote the most beautiful stories. She was brave and fierce and brilliant._

 _And you loved her a lot,_ Lucas observes thoughtfully.

Aurora nods. She smiles and wipes away a tear. _Yes I did,_ she says. _And she loved me back._

 

;;

 

Celia's older now; her limbs have grown tired and heavy. Her hair's grayed. Her joints are too stiff to sit and write for hours, like she used to. She lingers in her bedroom, gazing out into the city. The only photo she has of Aurora still sits on her dresser; Celia takes it down and holds it in her lap, tracing her fingers over the glass. Aurora, in her checkered shirt, hands folded, a bemused smile on her face. The photo is faded and yellowed with age, but Aurora's eyes still shine just as bright.

(a light i'd never seen before.)

Francisca and Diana and Elisa sit around her bed. Elisa holds her hand. There are tears in her eyes. Celia wishes that she could reach up and wipe them away, but she doesn't have the strength. She's too tired. The sounds of murmured conversation in the hallway make her drowsy. She turns her hand, so that she can lace her and Elisa's fingers together. The sun is streaming through the window; Celia can feel the warmth of it on her skin.

 _Don't be sad,_ Celia tells Elisa, softly. She looks over at Francisca, then Diana, behind her. _I'm happy. Because I'll finally be with her again._

She sighs, her mind drifting. She thinks she can almost feel Aurora with her now. The touch of Aurora's hand on her hand. A kiss pressed to her forehead. Aurora's voice in her head, murmuring sweet phrases, her favorite poem. Meine Liebe, Aurora is whispering. Mi amor, mi vida. Cariño. Come back to me, Aurora is saying. Come back to me.

 _I've loved her all my life,_ Celia says. She closes her eyes, smiling. _I think I've kept her waiting long enough._

 

;;

 

And here, now, is Aurora. Young and beautiful as she was that first day. She is turning, smiling. 

_Celia,_ she says.

The sound of Aurora saying her name is still the sweetest thing Celia's ever heard.

She's home again, at last.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to heartsways for looking this over. And thanks to everyone who said, "write both stories".
> 
> Originally, when I was first planning on writing a San Junipero AU, I had a few ideas that I couldn't decide between. When writing [this story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9536615), I became more and more attached to the idea of San Junipero being a literal heaven. And I also wanted to give Celia and Aurora a "proper" ending.


End file.
